


Start As You Mean to Go On

by wanttobeatree



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Character Study, Gen, Genderswap, Pre-Series, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-31
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kirks had been expecting a boy. The Kirks had been expecting a lot of things, starting with a higher survival rate and working its way down from there. It's the story of Jemma T. Kirk's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start As You Mean to Go On

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Coldplay's _A Rush of Blood to the Head_.

There was a long, hot, perfect summer when Jemma was nine, when she cajoled Sam into cutting off all her hair while Frank’s back was turned, and for those two months she ran free and friendless, kicking up dust as the sun baked the uncovered tips of her ears, and when asked by strangers, by outsiders – because everyone knows everyone in a town like Riverside and everyone in the state, the planet, the entire freaking Federation knows the _Kelvin_ and the Kirks – she gave her name as ‘Jim’; and for those two months, those two precious, perfect months, she got away with it.

When, inevitably, it all goes to shit – starting with the return to school and Jemma’s teacher looking up at her from the attendance list and saying, mouth twisting like she’s trying not to laugh, “Oh Jemma, what _have_ you done to your lovely hair?”; (and later she goes home and tries to cut it off again, shorter this time, without Sam’s help this time, and Frank just stands and watches her, he just stands and stares) – she curls up with those memories in her hands and feeds them like an ember, blows on it until it sparks, the knowledge that she can do what she, be what she, wants; and she closes herself around it, like a fist.

 

 

The real name on her birth certificate is James Tiberius Kirk, because for those ten short seconds that George and Jemma had lived and breathed together, George had thought he had another son and then ten seconds later he was dead and Winona hadn’t thought, hadn’t even been able to _stand_ the thought, of him never not ever knowing his second child’s name. 

The Kirks had been expecting a boy. The Kirks had been expecting a lot of things, starting with a higher survival rate and working its way down from there.

 

 

Winona doesn’t know what to do with a girl, as likely to bring back spare parts and broken phasers as she is dresses and alien dolls when she comes home, which suits Jemma just fine. But then Winona doesn’t know what to do with a lot of things a lot of time, sometimes brushing their hair and making them grilled cheese on the antique stove and sometimes sitting and staring off into space as if she’s already disappeared up into the stars again, and most of the time she’s just not there at all.

“You look so much like your father,” she always says when she’s around, whether Jemma’s wincing in a dress a size too small because two months and ten light years ago Winona couldn’t remember how tall she was or covered in engine grease from her explorations of the antique car. Jemma squints into the shining hubcaps or the mirror she can barely see over the mantelpiece, searching for something, for her mother’s eyes or father’s nose or brother’s ears, for a sign.

Jemma Kirk, whose first word was _look_ , whose second word was _bye._

Jemma Kirk, whose third word was _why?_

 

 

With Sam gone, with Winona never truly present to begin with, it falls to Frank to be something, anything, in Jemma’s life, to buy her first bras, to talk her through her first period, awash in resentment, the pair of them awash in a resentment so deep she could drown in it. They rattle around each other in this too big, too empty house, avoiding all edges, avoiding all collisions, because Jemma knows the second they touch something is gonna explode. 

“I didn’t sign up for this,” he hisses in her face one night, hot breath against her skin, one clammy hand gripping her arm too tight. “I didn’t sign up for childcare, you stupid little girl, _stupid little bitch_.”

She is not stupid. She is anything but stupid. Jemma doesn’t want to drown, but if she does, if she must, she’s taking him down with her, hands curled into fists.

 

 

If she could have learned to fly before she learned to walk, she would have done. Maybe this is the next best thing, throwing herself forwards from a speeding car, shoulders, back arched, her hands wide open and full of empty air, and laughing. Eleven years old is already too long on this world, but not drowning, no, not drowning.

 

 

“Hey,” says Jemma, aged fourteen, canting her hips and pursing her lips, her wrists so thin by now he could wrap his fingers twice around them but she smiles at him prettily, her heart thudding in her chest with nausea and with hunger, but not fear, never fear.

“Hey,” she says. “You’ve got food. Wanna trade?”

And afterwards she runs back to the others, laughing, beaming, knuckles bleeding, and _it’s okay_ she tells them, riding high, _it’s okay._ If you think I look bad, you should see the other guy.

 

 

“Hey,” says Jemma, aged fifteen, to a guy in her math class who’s smart but not as smart as her but it’ll do, and it doesn’t take much more than that, she’s gained back all her weight in what she’s been reliably informed are all the right places.

And afterwards he tells the whole grade she’s a slut and she punches him so hard he vomits all over her shoes, and later in detention she catches the eye of a girl and winks and smiles. She is not easy. She is anything but easy.

 

 

She lets her hair grow until it touches her shoulders again, she bites her lip, she paints her nails. This is easy, half her life fighting and the other half overnight in the jail cell until Frank comes to collect her, until Winona sometimes, sometimes, sometimes comes home. 

Everyone knows that Kirk girl, everyone knows that rowdy, wild Jemma Kirk who’s nothing like her father. No, she’s nothing like her father. _At last_ , Jemma says, _at last something we can all agree on._

But in the night, when the fight is over, she crawls out through her bedroom window to lick her wounds, to lick the blood from her knuckles, and to walk, kicking up the dust in the moonlight. She stands at the edge of the quarry, but she doesn’t look down, she looks up. Counting stars, counting seconds, counting down.

Something is going to explode.

 

 

“Hey,” says Jemma, aged 22, to the pretty girl in the Star Fleet uniform with a long, shining ponytail and clever eyes, and somehow it all ends in a bar fight anyway. It’s the story of her life, it’s the first day of the rest of it.


End file.
